Chicken Crate

I didn’t design this chicken crate, as it is a half size copy of the wooden crates from about 100 years ago. The only change in the design was the addition of corner brackets. Most of the surviving crates that I have seen have damaged corner dowels, so I made the brackets. The only concern was how to clamp the corners. What I came up with was to use two different size C-clamps so one would “leap frog” over the other. To keep the clamps from bruising the wood of the crate, I made some cauls that would spread the force over a wider area. Works great.

Very strange, my wife and I were antique shopping today and ran across the Turkey sized one, with tiny chicken wire bottom and another chicken sized one with slatted bottom. Both were the real deal, but seeing yours, your’s is truly the real deal too. Right down to the way the doors are made. We both wanted them, but couldn’t come up with a real reason to have them, or the right place to put them.

Lot of work. Both were priced between $70-75, and each was in a different shop.